Oakland moves to sue landlord over evictions / City Council votes to seek injunction if negotiations fail

Janine DeFao, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Wednesday, July 16, 2003

The Oakland City Council voted Tuesday night to sue the developer of a Chinatown housing and retail complex unless he agrees to delay the evictions of some 20 low-income residents by the end of the month.

The City Council decided in a closed session to seek an injunction against Larry Chan if he does not agree by July 30 to a three-month postponement in evicting tenants, including several senior citizens. Chan wants to turn their apartments in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza into market-rate condominiums.

"Practically speaking, waiting until July 30 does not help the tenants," who have been ordered to move out July 31, said Margaretta Lin, an attorney with the East Bay Community Law Center. "We're pursuing legal options on our own. Someone has to protect the tenants."

City officials want the delay in order to continue negotiations with Chan and explore buying the units and keeping them as affordable housing. Council members have previously said they can't afford the $17.8 million Chan most recently sought.

Chan, president of Park Lane Hotels International and International Hoteliers Management Corp., which owns the Pacific Renaissance, did not return phone calls for comment Tuesday.

But he has previously denied any wrongdoing, saying his 10-year agreement with the city to keep the apartments affordable has expired and that the city turned down its option to buy the units.

Tenant advocates, however, say Chan violated that agreement by overcharging residents $2 million over the past 10 years, which Chan denies.

They also say the city wrongly forgave Chan a $7 million redevelopment loan,

which could be worth $16 million today with interest, because the action was never approved by the City Council. That money, they say, could be used to purchase the apartments.

The advocates argue that the eviction notices are invalid because Chan issued them sooner than his agreement with the city allowed.

Since the eviction notices were issued in April, many tenants have moved out of the building. Advocates estimate 20 residents, mostly senior citizens, remain. Chan previously said only eight elderly tenants were left.

In other business, the council voted unanimously in closed session to pay $2 million to settle the civil rights lawsuit of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, the Earth First activists who sued Oakland police investigators and FBI agents after the pair were injured in a 1990 car bombing. Bari and Cherney claimed FBI agents and Oakland police had violated their constitutional rights to free speech and protection from unlawful searches in an investigation in which they were never cleared as suspects.

The total settlement is $4 million, with the city and federal governments each paying half, city officials said.

A jury in June 2002 awarded $4.4 million to Cherney and the estate of Bari, who died of cancer in 1997. It was one of the biggest civil rights verdicts of its kind. Oakland was liable for $2 million of the verdict, plus all of the plaintiffs' attorneys fees, estimated at $4 million to $5 million.

But the city had been seeking a retrial or defense judgment, claiming jury instructions were invalid, while also negotiating a settlement.

City Attorney John Russo said the settlement meant the city would not have to pay the attorney fees.

U.S. Justice Department officials in Washington did not return phone calls for comment Tuesday, but Oakland officials said the settlement covered both the city and the federal government.

"A lot of compromises were made by all parties," Cherney said Tuesday night.

"We knew that Oakland was facing hard times, so we decided to be reasonable and forgo our motion for attorneys' fees if they were willing to be reasonable and offer us a respectable settlement."

Also Tuesday, one of the city's four employee unions voted to accept what is essentially a 3 percent pay cut to stave off layoffs and a monthly shutdown of city buildings. The city is seeking the deal to help close a $37 million shortfall in the budget for the current fiscal year.